1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for producing an L-amino acid using a microorganism. L-amino acids are useful in various fields, such as ingredients in seasonings, food additives, feed additives, chemicals, and drugs.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
L-Amino acids are industrially produced by fermentation using microorganisms belonging to the genus Brevibacterium, Corynebacterium, Escherichia, or the like. In such production methods, strains are used which are isolated from nature or artificial variants of such strains. Furthermore, microorganisms modified by recombinant DNA techniques so that activity of a basic L-amino acid biosynthesis enzyme is increased, and so forth are used (EP 0643135 B, EP 0733712 B, EP 1477565 A, EP 0796912 A, EP 0837134 A, WO01/53459, EP 1170376 A, WO2005/010175, WO96/17930).
It has been reported that Escherichia coli has a metabolic pathway called the arginine succinyltransferase pathway which acts to decompose L-arginine; 97% of L-arginine decomposition occurs via this arginine succinyltransferase pathway (J. Bacteriol. (1998) Vol. 180, No. 16, 4278-4286). Moreover, it has also been reported that this arginine succinyltransferase pathway decomposes L-arginine with a group of enzymes encoded by the astCADBE operon contained in the genomic sequence of Escherichia coli (GenBank Accession No. U00096) (J. Bacteriol., 1998, Vol. 180, No. 16, 4278-4286).
However, the relation between the arginine succinyltransferase pathway and L-amino acid production has not been previously reported.